i picked up a 286 mobo at a yard sale two months ago. it has IBm written all over it and i suspect that it was ripped out of a pc or ps/2. It says on it 256/512k system board and has an AT ketboard port and some short and long ISA slots. I don't have a standard ISA video card so i cant tell if it even works, this thing dosen't even have drive controllers built in :!:

I considered doing a case mod prodject with it but i'm not sure. what do you think i should do?

P.S. at the moment since i cant tell what its doing so i dont even know if it works.

Vlad

January 8th, 2006, 08:14 AM

Back before your time, in the days of the 8088, 8086, and 80286, everything had to be done with ISA cards. Video, Drive controllers, serial ports, even RAM cards sometimes! Evey thing except the keyboard and mouse almost always needed to have a card. That's why they usually had a lot of ISA slots. If its IBM, it MIGHT have an MCA slot. but I doubt a 286 would have one.... So to do anything, your going to get a hold of some old ISA drive controllers and an ISA video card. 286's mainly ran on 5.25 inch Floppy drives so you'll probably need one of those and a copy of DOS on a 5.25 disk.

That should e enough to get you going.....

-Vlad

Jorg

January 8th, 2006, 08:16 AM

Back before your time, in the days of the 8088, 8086, and 80286, everything had to be done with ISA cards. Video, Drive controllers, serial ports, even RAM cards sometimes! Evey thing except the keyboard and mouse almost always needed to have a card. That's why they usually had a lot of ISA slots. If its IBM, it MIGHT have an MCA slot. but I doubt a 286 would have one.... So to do anything, your going to get a hold of some old ISA drive controllers and an ISA video card. 286's mainly ran on 5.25 inch Floppy drives so you'll probably need one of those and a copy of DOS on a 5.25 disk.

That should e enough to get you going.....
-Vlad

Even the mouse took a serial card .. but who needed a mouse then?

Vlad

January 8th, 2006, 09:22 AM

Yeah, Why have a mouse on a 286? Its DOS! Just type the command and use batch files like everyone else....

Jorg

January 8th, 2006, 10:01 AM

hmmm yummie- 4dos batch files! :lol:

Terry Yager

January 8th, 2006, 10:24 AM

A '286 can run Windows 3.1, if it has enough memory.

BTW, I can get ya started with a few cards, etc (for postage cost). You'll also need an AT power supply to fire it up.

--T

carlsson

January 8th, 2006, 11:33 AM

I believe a 286 can even use a Microsoft mouse in DOS mode. Remember the ads for Microsoft Word, featuring a keyboard where all the control keys were taped over, and instead they told you to use the marvellous mouse to control every aspect of the word processor? That was in the DOS days, c:a 1984.

Jorg

January 8th, 2006, 11:53 AM

I believe a 286 can even use a Microsoft mouse in DOS mode. Remember the ads for Microsoft Word, featuring a keyboard where all the control keys were taped over, and instead they told you to use the marvellous mouse to control every aspect of the word processor? That was in the DOS days, c:a 1984.

Oh for sure it can. It can run DOS 4.01, even with its marvelous Dosmenu that uses a mouse. Or wordperfect 5. :)

Zmatt

January 8th, 2006, 02:31 PM

before my time.....if you say so
I was just to young to be messing with 8086's
I was taught most of what I know in the early and mid nineties so I got used to industry standards like ATX ect.
About the cards, thanks I don't have many ISA cards (most of mine are EISA , PCI and the like)

Terry Yager

January 8th, 2006, 06:18 PM

About the cards, thanks I don't have many ISA cards (most of mine are EISA , PCI and the like)

Pm me with a mailing add & req for which cards you need. (I have a VGA card & an MFM/RLL hdd controller that work with an AT system).

--T

carlsson

January 9th, 2006, 02:23 AM

In terms of availability, I think EISA and MCA would me much less common to know about and have than 16-bit ISA (or even 8-bit ISA).

Chris2005

January 23rd, 2006, 04:11 PM

that sounds like an AT mobo. Yes you had to add everything back then. Allowed for flexibility (not that it was needed all that much after long, things became so standardized). Remember the days - the original 5150 had a cassette port built in! Was common to use a cassette deck for data storage (and even some programs were distributed like that). Other programs used the mouse - quite a few. Graphical junk, LUMENA comes to mind, CAD stuph. I have an early Lotus suite of programs that use the mouse (late 80's, not all that early). I think Quick Basic and Quick C used the mouse too.